How Australia defied global health authority on coronavirus

Sydney Morning Herald;

Why were the Australians ahead of the world? For a very simple reason. They don’t trust the WHO. The information from multiple international sources is that the WHO is under intense pressure from the Chinese government, and succumbing to it.
 

The Australian Commonwealth Chief Medical Officer, Brendan Murphy, told the NSC that it was medically inexplicable that the WHO hadn’t already declared a global pandemic. It’s politics, in other words.
 
That’s why Australia had earlier forged ahead of the WHO in declaring the China travel ban, on February 1. It was, again, on the unanimous advice of the AHPPC.

35 Replies to “How Australia defied global health authority on coronavirus”

  1. Letting China become a global superpower was a huge mistake from the beginning. Now we’re reaping the consequences of not cutting them to size when we had the means.

    1. getting cut to size may be happening as we speak.. will their economy survive? Trust factor from now on will be a huge hill to climb. I hope someone is in the process of putting our needed medications back into manufacture.

    2. Think of it as part of Mo Strong’s plan to de-industrialize the west in order to save the planet.

    3. We still have the means. It’s 1940’s technology.

      Donald Trump has repeatedly insisted on a convincing explanation why thermonuclear weapons must not be used. He has never gotten one.

      Actually, what’s happening to the stock market on fears that China, Inc. could shut up shop for even a shirt while should tell you why. Most “American” corporations, if they were forced to pay a living wage to Americans, would shut their doors tomorrow morning. Faced with what it cost to build an iTurd in the USA, nobody would pay it.

      1. Yeah except now they have means to respond. Bad decisions started with no nuking your beloved Siberian Mongols in 1945 and it went downhill from then.

        1. “Bad decisions started with no nuking your beloved Siberian Mongols in 1945 and it went downhill from then.”

          One of the things we agree on.

          1. So you support nuking Soviets but are opposed to bombing of Dresden? Where is the logic behind that?

    1. I wonder what a can of WD-40 is doing on the bookshelf, right under the VHS video tape.

  2. Still accepting folks from “infected” countries – Iran is one. All those citizens of convenience in “Post National” Kanader. LPOC douche bags. I’m just amazed at the numbers of folks who call Kanader “home”, never live here, but when the going gets tough they run back like your dog meeting a bear.
    Remember Lebanon? Looks like China is the same. Bunch of them live on my street. I’ll have to check and see who’s “home” now.

  3. Because of it’s remote location AND unique flora and fauna, Australia has always maintained a rigorous control of its borders. maybe a lesson Europe or Canada could learn.

  4. Only 25 cases in Australia, 20 in Canada, and 70 in the US so far.
    We in the US have only had 15 people in the catch the virus here. About half of our US cases came off the Plague Princess cruise ship in Japan, and most of the rest came from China itself. That is fantastic performance so far. Be glad we are not Italy with 1100, or South Korea with 3100 infected; but all it takes is one idiot spreading the disease, just like the idiot nurse in Dallas spreading Ebola to people in the US back in 2014.

    We are doing a lot better than I thought we would. It is Leap Day, and we have had less than 20 people get COVID-2019 from person to person contacts. Hopefully it will continue. Let’s see how we are doing on Saint Patrick’s Day?

    1. The interesting read at Joannenova is just below ‘How the virus kills’.
      Sinbad, who apparently lives in Iran, gives a summary of what he knows or has seen in Iran.
      He mentions one city dug 2000 new graves in ONE WEEK.
      Very interesting numbers being thrown around.

  5. More muslims arrived in Ontario today with the China virus. Why is Blackie not banning travel to Canada from Iran. Oh wait that would be Islamophobic. Besides, Blackie has taken the weekend off.

      1. If they split, does it mean that Soapy will have a lower profile and we won’t have to suffer through any more of her attempts at hogcallling?

    1. Ontario John, I could enjoy your posts if you could back them up with an effing link once in a while.

      1. For story of Iranian Muslims being allowed into Canada go to the National Post- it’s there.

    2. …taken the weekend off? I await him to show up anywhere, he’s probably in Barbados or New York at the UN with a tube of k-Y

  6. The WHO declared that North Korea had an excellent healthcare system.

    Of course Australia wouldn’t trust it.

    Then again, these people also blame global warming or whatever the hell people are calling it these days for the fires that they have every year, so …

  7. Toronto Star

    Why Donald Trump won’t have the guts to fight the next election
    By Tony BurmanForeign Affairs ColumnistFri., April 26, 2019timer3 min. read
    4-6 minutes

    Will Donald J. Trump lose the 2020 U.S. presidential election?

    No, I suspect he won’t lose — but not because he’ll win.

    Instead — faced with the frightening prospect of ending up in jail — the odds are now growing that a desperate Trump will resign before the next election in exchange for a pardon from his obsequious successor, Vice-President Mike Pence.

    That is what Richard Nixon did in 1974 as the Watergate scandal swamped his presidency. He quit after making a controversial deal for a pardon with his successor, vice-president Gerald Ford — who then went on to be punished by American voters in the presidential election that followed.

    That same scenario emerges from between the lines of the explosive 448-page report about Trump’s Russian ties by special counsel Robert Mueller.

    Rather than “exonerating” Trump, as the president and his acolytes have claimed, Mueller’s report is a breathtaking portrayal of a corrupt, clueless Trump crowd that happily worked with America’s most hostile adversary to undermine the 2016 presidential election.

    Significantly, for a Trump presidency that has consistently echoed Josef Stalin’s odious condemnation of a free press as “the enemy of the people,” the report confirmed most of the two years of investigative reporting from news organizations such as the New York Times and the Washington Post.

    In essence, Mueller’s findings made it clear that Russia was determined to subvert the 2016 election in Trump’s favour — their candidate — to serve its own interests.

    YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN…

    Read more:

    Eight things we learned from the Mueller report

    Democratic leaders leery of impeachment

    Trump’s post-Mueller plan: Just say no

    The Trump campaign was undoubtedly encouraging of what was going on, and the newly elected president worked obsessively to block efforts to investigate what happened.

    YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN…

    And, yes, in the razor-thin election of 2016, where 107,000 votes in three states out of 120 million votes cast effectively won the presidency for Trump, Russia’s intervention in favour of Trump was most likely a deciding factor.

    However, there were some consolation prizes in the report for Trump. Mueller concluded that, however enthusiastic Trump and his team may have been in working with the Russians, his investigators couldn’t prove a criminal conspiracy because they may have simply been ignorant “that their conduct was unlawful.” (This is colloquially known as the “stupidity” defence.)

    As for evidence that Trump “obstructed” justice once in office by trying to subvert Mueller’s inquiry, the report provided numerous examples of this happening but appeared to leave it to Congress to determine whether these constituted a crime.

    But the biggest threat to Trump lies ahead. It is not the prospect of impeachment that will sink the Trump presidency. It will be in the courts.

    The Mueller report states that his team transferred nine cases involving possible criminal conduct — still unidentified — to other U.S. attorney offices. Although a sitting U.S. president is protected from indictment while in office, this doesn’t apply the moment he or she is out of office.

    Several of Trump’s potential crimes still under investigation — involving money laundering, campaign violations and counterintelligence issues — may have a statute of limitations that runs out in 2022, or later. That means he could very well be charged if he is no longer president after next year’s election.

    That is Trump’s dilemma. His approval rating in some recent polls is as low as it has been since he became president. Will Trump risk running for re-election, knowing that if he loses, he may wind up in jail?

    Get more opinion in your inbox

    Get the latest from your favourite Star columnists with our Opinion email newsletter.

    Sign Up Now

    Let’s remember who Trump has revealed himself to be over these many years.

    A man not known for personal courage, who used “bone spurs” to get out of military service in Vietnam, a germophobe who is petrified by the sight of blood and seems incapable of ever firing anyone directly, Trump is not a man who would want to spend his twilight years in the grubby confines of prison.

    President Pence — perish the thought! — get yourself ready.

    Tony Burman

    Tony Burman, formerly head of CBC News and Al Jazeera English, is a freelance contributor for the Star. He is based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @TonyBurman

    1. Posted without actually reading. What would be the point?

      It was the headline that caught my attention a while ago.

  8. Tony Burman has a terminal case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

    He told us that Trump had zero chance of getting the Republican nomination. Then he predicted that Trump would lose to Hillary in a landslide. All of his Trump predictions have been disastrously wrong.

    Why anyone sane would take Berman seriously is a mystery!

  9. Re Australia and their quick response, I watched several videos of Australia Border Control and got so frustrated and discouraged seeing what fools the Chinese think white people are that I had to stop. Never saw the kind of barefaced liars as those returning to Australia from China and what they were trying to smuggle into the country. Wouldn’t believe a word any of them said after that.

Navigation